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System support Wiki
[[Test|'System management']] System maintenance and disaster recovery System and network management tools A4 Managing user support requests Welcome to the System Manager Wiki This wiki will teach you about the jobs of a system support worker and the activities they do and the tools they use. Please read on to learn more. About a system manager There are many activities a IT system manager can do these can be just managing the network/system or providing support to other colleges. But they will have a certain routine that they must follow each day, the side jobs or support work come in between the routine. Activities-''' Their routine would start off with them coming in and firstly checking their emails for any updates or any tasks that need to be done, This is an important task for them to do as it could dictate what they do during the day so I would definately say do this first, after that they should run a full network scan to try and detect any errors or faults in their network if there are any. Once this is done they may take 10 minutes to direct the department and make sure the other I.T technicians are doing their job and that they know what their doing for the day. After everyone is on track they may want to review the filtering/firewall of the network to see if it’s doing its job or if the technician has been told to add something to the black list of the filter. Later in the day they will want to run a system backup, this will backup all the files on the network and will ensure if any files are lost they can be restored. Once the system manager has a bit of time on their hand they may want to take phone calls or make them to people who need help or anything that needs to be sorted also they may want to do ome walk in requests, a walk in request is where a member of staff from any department has asked someone from the I.T technician team to come down and fix something or to help them with something technical. This should be all that a system manager does in their day although there may be days where they do it differently depending on the situation. The system manager has many jobs/activities to do there are some that must been done daily and others that must be done every so often, but in order to become a system manager you must have some understanding of networking and system monitoring as most of the jobs you do involve maintaining a network and keeping the computers on that network safe and working. 'Tools-' There are a few online tools that can be very helpful to a system manager, A Lot of these basically do the same thing which is scan a network and give you the vitals of it and tell you if there are any issues or flaws in it. Some of them will do more such as give you the IP's of your the computers on that network. One program called Network Miner will capture any network packets so that the person in control can see what's being sent over the network e.g Images, files or messages. This can be useful in a company network as if an employee is looking at something they shouldn't or doing something the system manager can track it see what PC it came from and see what they sent. Advance IP scanner will show you all of the IP’s connected to a WiFi network it also has a remote control function where you can wake up or shutdown some devices connected to the network. This can also be a handy tool in a company environment as it gives you more control over the PC’s connected to the network. One Tool that I recommend that I just mention is Network miner. Network miner offers a load of tools that can be used in a network that will benefit the user/network operator. It can extract any emails,images or files sent over the network, This will be useful in a company environment as the network operator can see if any employees are messaging or sending images that they shouldn't be. It also offers a lot of information about the files sent over the network such as the file extension the size of the file. It is also a simple program to use as you just simply download it from their website then run it, Once its loaded up all you have to do is select the network you want it to monitor. Once this is done it will start collecting information about the network. Another thing that network miner does is it collects the credentials of anyone logged into the network these can be found under the credentials tab of the program. The reason why I think this would be useful in a company is the Systems manager can track who is logged on when, so if something happened either in the actual building or on the network they can trace who was on a PC at that time. This feature mainly ties in with security which is why I recommend that this program be used. The term used for a program like this is call a passive network sniffer/packet capturing tool, as thats basically what it does, it detects packets being sent then captures them so they can be viewed. Tools that a system manager will definitely be using will be anti-virus software such as Norton, avast or Kaspersky. These can all be use to scan a PC and detect any viruses or malicious software and once detected it will quarantine and remove them. If the system manager has some funding they may want to think about investing into a paid antivirus as these are almost always better than the free ones and for a professional company it will be a bit unprofessional of them to have a free antivirus. An anti malware software such as malware-bytes will also be useful as it is very good at detecting malware that most antivirus software would miss. Other tools that would be use are some of the ones already built in to windows such as the users and groups function. Users can be used to give employees logins and control how much access those employees have, Its best to use users in groups as you can have a general user and then this one will only have access to the things they need and this user can be used by most of the employees. A system manager Wouldn’t usually have to set this up as it should already be set up when the company was formed and started using computers but if a system manager has just been hired by a newly founded company and they don't have this setup then they will definitely want to set this up soon. As a system manager you may have to tweak this function sometimes or fine tune it as there be a few flaws in it such as some employees having access to files they shouldn't have access to. Another instance where they would have to change things in the users and groups may be when an employee gets fired it will probably be best to lock their account once they have left and change the password to it that way they cant access it from outside the company. Other than that there isn't much else they would need to do on the user and groups function. '''Disaster recovery is another part to being a system manager as it would be your responsibility to make sure the company's disaster plan is up to date and efficient, Also you would have to make sure that the plan is put in place so that when it is needed it can easily be used. What is a disaster plan? A Disaster recovery plan is a set of instructions/procedures that you follow in case of an emergency or an accident. It's usually a detailed step by step plan that will get the company/organization back on track, It will usually start with assessing what is wrong and finding out what they need to continue working. Before making a plan the company will usually perform a business impact analysis and a risk analysis. They will also create a recovery time objective, this is a time that has been work out as the maximum amount of time it will take for the company to get back up a running. The plan will consist of the roles of each individuals and what they must do during the company's down time in order to get it back on track. It will also include how they go about getting back online, this will change depending on what actually went wrong and what is needed to get back to working order. Say it was a hard drive failure then the plan would be to get a new hard drive as quick as possible and replace the broken one, but they would also have to consider the data on the drive. The company should be backing up its data daily so that the replacement drive will have the same information and the broken one. They can do this by using a raid set up where the main drive is mirrored to another replacement drive that can be swapped in when needed. If the company does not backup their data then they are in a lot of trouble as there's not much they could do to get that data back immediately, they could get the drive sent off to an external company and they could attempt to get any data off the failed drive but this will take time. System maintenance Another thing That a system manager may do is system maintenance, this could be jobs such as repairing computers either physically or software,This is an important task as its necessary to keep all the machines running, With physical damage they would usually have to get a replacement part for the one that is broken, sometimes if its a common break such as a hard drive or a broken ram stick it may be helpful to have spare parts lying around so if there was a break it could quickly and easily be fixed on the spot. Software damages could be things like viruses, malware or data corruption, these will generally take longer to fix and will require scans or going back to a backup point that should be set before hand. 'Walk in requests-' As a system manager you may be asked to do walk in requests or system support this is where you go around the company helping out any employee’s that are having technical issues, whether it just be turning the PC off and on again or replacing a component there will be many situations where employees need help. A good system that the system manager may want to set up is a ticket system, this is where the employee instead of calling of the I.T department can fill out an online form and send it to them that way if it's an easy fix the Department can just email back the instructions on the fix. This form can include the employees email, the department their working in and the problem they are having. If the problem is a major problem then the I.T department can send someone down to diagnose and fix it. Latest activity Category:Browse